Vaughn Palmer: Aboriginal child welfare system is a gravy train with no destination

Vaughn Palmer, Vancouver Sun columnist11.06.2013

There’s virtually nothing to show for the $66 million spent by the B.C. government in the past 12 years on improving aboriginal child welfare, according to a damning report by child advocate Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond.

VICTORIA — The effort to reform government services for aboriginal children began with the best of intentions on the part of public servants, politicians and native leaders alike.

More than half of the children in care are aboriginal, though they account for less than 10 per cent of the population under the age of 18. Native communities, angered that so many of their children were being taken by the state, wanted a greater measure of control and control over those decisions.

“Landmark agreements between government and aboriginal leaders set the foundation for a new, more positive relationship (and) created a climate of hope,” as child and youth representative Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond noted in a report released Wednesday.

But as Turpel-Lafond goes on to chronicle in her almost 100 detailed and fully researched pages (46 boxes of documents, 76,000 pages reviewed), the result was a decade-long public policy catastrophe.

“Since 2002/03 more than $66 million has been expended on these change initiatives and not a single child directly served.”

About half the money went to an attempt — subsequently abandoned — to establish regional authorities to deliver aboriginal child care.

“Nearly $35 million ... paying people to meet, hiring consultants to facilitate those meetings, and producing materials of questionable practical value that almost never addressed the actual difficulties children and youth were experiencing in their lives.”

After that exercise was abandoned, the government substituted a replacement program, Indigenous Approaches, that Turpel-Lafond characterizes as “a hodgepodge of financial arrangements” grounded in a belief that “First Nations partners should do what they want” and be funded accordingly.

“The agenda was ad hoc and that securing resources consisted of making a pitch to senior officials, who then recommended funding for activities. The financial accounting was too poor to permit assessment of objectives and outcomes. These projects existed outside most government financial and policy frameworks.”

Against that backdrop, one has to note her damning comment on where many of the aforementioned millions landed: “To be blunt, a significant amount of money has gone to people who provide no program or service to directly benefit children.”

The representative doesn’t hesitate to name names. Page 51 of the report details some 18 native organizations that received $32 million in contracts over the years 2009-2012.

No question that this is a tale of bureaucratic failure: “There could not be a more confused, unstable and bizarre area of public policy than that which guides aboriginal child and family services in B.C. This area is rife with perverse performance measures, the absence of any real incentives for change and no end-state goals on how services to aboriginal children and youth will be improved.”

But she doesn’t let the native leadership off the hook: “The role of aboriginal organizations — especially political organizations — has also been central, as they have entered into high-level agreements and have been willing participants in this public policy failure. “

Turpel-Lafond voices thinly veiled contempt for the supposed “nation-to-nation” nature of negotiations between the province and local native child care agencies.

“Many of these negotiations are not with “nations” at all, but with community organizations, urban groups and others who lack the representational capacity to enter into self-government negotiations. Nor is B.C. a nation.”

She zeros in on a whole culture of evasion, where cheques are written with no accountability, money dispensed with no questions asked.

“This area is rife with competing ideas, episodes of activity directed without policy basis, and follows no observable logic, leaving it open to other agendas. Aboriginal child welfare goals, strategies and intended outcomes are undefined, there is a lack of evidence-based standards and practices, there is a disparity in access and availability of services, and there is a lack of accountability to aboriginal children whose lives have been impacted by the child welfare system.”

But every consultation, every contract, and every cheque creates an entrenched interest, and severing those relationships won’t be easy.

“There will be significant dissent,” she predicts. “The rewards given to initiatives and projects that have no chance of ever coming to fruition because they are fundamentally flawed have created an industry and forgotten the children and youth.”

She closes with five pages of recommendations, framed by a call to action.

“Senior bureaucrats and others in government must return to a model of public service and accountability that permits good collaboration but doesn’t abdicate control or send a massive chunk of the budget out to a sector that will provide no service but appears to make everyone feel good, or provides an illusion of progress where there is none.”

The feel-good factor. The illusion of progress where there is none. The pretence of nation-to-nation negotiations. An industry living off the avails of unfortunates. Turpel-Lafond confines her comments to the territory she knows, the programs she has examined in depth.

But you could say the same thing about any government program that expends millions of dollars in the name of aboriginal people, without providing demonstrable benefits to even one aboriginal child.

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Vaughn Palmer: Aboriginal child welfare system is a gravy train with no destination

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